General

A burning desire I've had in nearly every game of it's type I've played yet one in which has never been sated is the idea of adding a stronger tactical element within a strategy game.

No easy task in any example to combine the two I admit.

Lets look at two ideal examples.

In Homeworld 2, one can destroy the engines of larger ships and prevent movement. The same applies to turret hard-points on battlecruisers. Annoyingly however, this doesn't much affect game play. Large ships in the Homeworld series pretty much stand and shoot.

On the opposite side of the coin and a frequently used example would be Imperium Galactica 3, or NeXuS the Jupiter Incident as it was renamed.

With this game, the opposite applies. You destroy the modules and the target ship vastly looses it's capabilities and can be ground down to a floating hunk of useless metal.

I would like to see something similar with Gemini Wars but with a less complicated, less tactical approach that NeXuS deploys.

A nice compromise would be the ability to either, use a simple click command button with a convenient keyboard short-cut to "attack to disable" This will ensure your host will knock out the targets engines and ability to fight. Targeting individual sub systems to the extent of NeXuS is too much for a game like Gemini Wars. So give all ships fewer hard-points. Engines and power grid would be obvious and simple enough. Those go down and the ship is dead in space and unable to put up resistance.

So great, then what?

Give certain ships the ability to tow others, or employ a specialised support ship for this and other logistical roles. Drag the crippled wreck to a friendly station and fix her up. (or tow home one of your own crippled ships) I love tractor beams however this is some advanced theoretical technology that may upset the image of the Human factions in this game. Perhaps give tractor beams to the Gark and humans can employ "bucky cables" (Thank you Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda) Of course however, should we steal a Gark ship that has a tractor beam, then we should be able to deploy it.

I spend hours in games capturing enemy stuff, I have a nice Homeworld 1 save I will load up and Screen Shot to prove this. This method will give this ability to us patient micro nuts without destroying the simplified click and target concept of an RTS game. (Screenshot at bottom of the this post)Another possible sub feature would be to reverse engineer technologies from captured foreign ships.

boristhe wrote:Thanks for the ideas, I think we already have subsystem attacking but only on bigger capital ships. Smaller ship classes are to small for that (maybe we enable that later with some patch).

If I can be bothered to mess around with gravity wells in Homeworld, I can be bothered to do the equivalent in GW. Alll your ships must are belong to us...even the little ones. Along as the marine idea can be used on smaller ships I'd be happy. There shouldn't be anything, excluding hero units (if implemented) that should be exempt from capture. Disabling ships is a massive bonus but if only possible for larger ships, I can live with that.

/me pictures a solar system full of crippled ships floating around helplessly whilst the battle continues to rage on all around them. (ooooohh give ships crew, de-crewed derelict but intact ships? awesome, hello ST Armada <3)

boristhe wrote:Thanks for the ideas, I think we already have subsystem attacking but only on bigger capital ships. Smaller ship classes are to small for that (maybe we enable that later with some patch).

If I can be bothered to mess around with gravity wells in Homeworld, I can be bothered to do the equivalent in GW. Alll your ships must are belong to us...even the little ones. Along as the marine idea can be used on smaller ships I'd be happy. There shouldn't be anything, excluding hero units (if implemented) that should be exempt from capture. Disabling ships is a massive bonus but if only possible for larger ships, I can live with that.

/me pictures a solar system full of crippled ships floating around helplessly whilst the battle continues to rage on all around them. (ooooohh give ships crew, de-crewed derelict but intact ships? awesome, hello ST Armada <3)

boristhe wrote:Thanks for the ideas, I think we already have subsystem attacking but only on bigger capital ships. Smaller ship classes are to small for that (maybe we enable that later with some patch).

If I can be bothered to mess around with gravity wells in Homeworld, I can be bothered to do the equivalent in GW. Alll your ships must are belong to us...even the little ones. Along as the marine idea can be used on smaller ships I'd be happy. There shouldn't be anything, excluding hero units (if implemented) that should be exempt from capture. Disabling ships is a massive bonus but if only possible for larger ships, I can live with that.

/me pictures a solar system full of crippled ships floating around helplessly whilst the battle continues to rage on all around them. (ooooohh give ships crew, de-crewed derelict but intact ships? awesome, hello ST Armada <3)

boristhe wrote:Thanks for the ideas, I think we already have subsystem attacking but only on bigger capital ships. Smaller ship classes are to small for that (maybe we enable that later with some patch).

If I can be bothered to mess around with gravity wells in Homeworld, I can be bothered to do the equivalent in GW. Alll your ships must are belong to us...even the little ones. Along as the marine idea can be used on smaller ships I'd be happy. There shouldn't be anything, excluding hero units (if implemented) that should be exempt from capture. Disabling ships is a massive bonus but if only possible for larger ships, I can live with that.